Mr. Greg: How Long has the Outlaw project been underway?

Mr. Kaufman: Well, the genesis of the book is about ten years old. In other words, ten years ago I first conceived of such a book. But Technically-speaking,  actual work on it has been close to a year. And by a year, I mean ten hours a day, sometimes twelve, day in, day out. I've never worked as hard at  anything in my life. Outlaw pushed me to levels of focused effort I didn't know I was capable of. It tested me like a mountain. It made me religious. I mean, there were times when all I could do was pray for strength, courage to go on. I'm not being melodramatic. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. And it was bad enough when the book was slated to be 500 pages. When the decision was made by the publisher to double its size, I knew I was in for the ride of my life. I felt like Ishmael aboard the Pequod: only I was also Ahab! It was schizophrenic, part of me driving myself pitilessly, the other part working in mute anguish under my own lash. Crazy. I'll never do a book like that again.

Mr. Greg: How did you arrive at the theme of Outlaw for a poetic anthology?

Mr. Kaufman: Well, most immediately, the idea came to me at the funeral of the poet Jack Micheline. He died alone and broke. He was to my mind the consummate Outlaw poet. I remember thinking as I stood at the scattering of his ashes: "Damn, you have gone the limit, Jack, lived the outlaw poets life without compromise" and I was moved to tears. I swore then and there to be sure that he did not vanish into obscurity. Not only will this be his first major anthologization but the book is dedicated to Jack Micheline. May he rest in peace. There were so many others like him, neglected, the sheer injustice of it. Bob Kaufman. d.a.levy David Lerner. And so on. Poets who had died giving their all and the system tried to cover over their bones, as though they'd never been. The injustice of it burned in me, drove me like a fanatic.

And then, Outlaw came out of the substance of my whole life and career as a writer, particularly as a poet. I started out in earnest as a poet ten years ago at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in full revolt with my fellow poets in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, other places, against the rigidity and cloistered abstraction of contemporary poetry. Our purpose was not to suffuse the old corpse with new life but be rid of it altogether, create something completely fresh from out of our own flesh and bones. These were the days when Slam was not yet a movie and when open mike was not yet a  bizarre fashion show, but desperate young men and women of real genius with something to say and nothing to lose exploding with democratic spiritual and artistic passion to audiences of kindred souls, laying themselves bare with gifted art and brutal and unprecedented candor. It was shocking and it was also anti-art, and the walls of the academy trembled, oh yes, you bet they did. They were crapping their pants at the Academy of American Poets, they were soiling themselves with dread at the Poetry Society of America. They looked at us like criminals because we meant business, we were serious, and most of all, we didn't give a flying fuck about anything but the powerful truth in our poems, reaching the hearts and minds of others. We thought we could change things. We were outsiders. We were, in other words, romantics, desperate, a little dangerous, willing to try anything: Outlaws with nothing to lose. So, when I decided to do this book there was no question at all that Outlaw was going to be its theme, since all the poets I was interested in presenting, those who had influenced me, those who had come up together with me, those who were to come, all the poets, from unknown to famous whom I admired and cared about, were Outlaws of one kind or another.

Mr. Greg: How did you manage to get the cooperation of so many diverse literary estates? I imagine they were hard to deal with. What was your interaction with them like?

Mr. Kaufman: It wasn't as hard as you'd imagine. Just drudgery. Overall, the estates were highly cooperative, because a lot of the poets had been ignored, hadn't  gotten their full due and many of the estates were glad for a chance to help.
The Micheline estate for example. What a bunch of dolls Vince Silvere and Matt Gonzalez were. So helpful! And then you had something like Allen Ginsberg's estate: could anyone be sweeter or more cooperative, in the spirit of Allen himself, then Bob Rosenthal, the guy who oversees Allen's estate? The hard part was often publishers. The mentalities of permissions departments in publishing houses are akin to those of the inner bureaucratic sanctums of the KGB in the former Soviet Union. Just a dark, suspicious, curt, Kurtzian and nameless voice on the telephone line that comes on after a thousand futile tries by you to get through, appears suddenly, asks a few questions in a clipped voice and hangs up. Six months later, out of the blue, if you're lucky and the negotiation hasn't been too tough, comes the contract demanding six times as much as you'd agreed to pay. It was amazing. Back you went to start the thing all over again. I was lucky in having the help of my publisher for some of the really brutal ones. Of course, inevitably there were the monsters, the estates that border on the criminal in their grasping, greedy and self-defeating administration of a poet or novelist who was known in his lifetime for fabulous generosity, giving poems away, composing in box cars and bathrooms and cafes, poets who responded to your hopeful letters with hand-painted letters, manuscripts typed on old Smith Coronas, and now their work is in the hands of some bimbo or pack of cousins and uncles who are out to rape everything they can get down to the last drop of the dead geniuses sweat. That made me sick. And there were a few threats made. My response was very Zen. And they blew by like dust.

Mr. Greg: How is Outlaw structured?

Mr. Kaufman: The book opens with Voices From Outlaw Heaven, in which I present poems by five poets who have died in the pursuit of their careers, talking, in poems, about the price of the outlaw life. This is the prelude. And then the book races through some of the most exciting poetry imaginable, its like a runaway train, sounding the themes that one is to find throughout the rest of the book. This is a kind of overture. And then comes the first poetry grouping, a kind of movement, and so forth. Its a musical structure. I worked hard for that.

Alan Kaufman

Mr. Greg: What have you found most fulfilling from editing such a gargantuan text?

Mr. Kaufman: The sense of presenting an unknown history, of possibly rescuing some poets from oblivion, of issuing a major challenge to our rigidified way of viewing American poetry, of presenting poems that have privately thrilled me for years to the widest possible audience. I loved reading the poems, soaking in this great ocean of human experience.

Mr. Greg: What type of reception do you expect Outlaw to receive?

Mr. Kaufman: I think it's going to be adored and damned, but doesn't everyone think that about what they do? We'll just have to wait and see. But I do think that the book is going to be snapped up sales-wise. And I think that over time it's going to become a bible of a kind for young poets and old. Maybe along the line of Donald Allen's New American Poetry fifty years ago.

Mr. Greg: What do you hope readers will gain from Outlaw?

Mr. Kaufman: The sense of limitless freedom that poetry brings, and a sense of reverence for their own lives. Also, the realization that to be a visionary means to be willing to go all the way, to make the ultimate sacrifice as some of these poets did. It will inspire them to greater authenticity in their own actions, a sense of dedication, and belonging to a brother-sisterhood of fellow poets, this most of all! And I hope it will instill in them a passion for justice. And pride in the rich history of outlaw poetry. When I started out, the kind of poetry that I and others like me do was as marginalized as could be. Today, (often to its detriment) it's center-stage. Outlaw is a reminder not just to me but others to stay one step ahead of the law-bringers and fame-grabbers, to be an outlaw in order to keep vision and intuition alive and thriving.

Mr. Greg: What are your three favorite pieces in Outlaw?

Mr. Kaufman: If I answer that question, some of these Outlaws will hunt me down like a yeller dawg.

Mr. Greg: Which three living poets in the anthology do you see as having the greatest potential to develop into a national or world-class artisan? Why?

Mr. Kaufman: I wouldn't pass that kind of judgment to the expense of any other. I see them all, living and dead, as possessing that breakaway potential. It's kind of up to God, isn't it? For the dead poet, seen in "Outlaw" in this new way, may achieve a heretofore unsuspected significance to the audience, while the living poet has his or her task clearly before her and too many poems to write to know which will endure, which won't or bother to worry about that. I have faith, though, that many from among these ranks are going to forge new ground in the American cultural landscape and open doors for others to follow.

Visit Alan Kaufman at http://www.Tatoojew.com